Thursday, August 30, 2007

Yes, you are right: this only makes "sense" for a joint selling chicken breasts. (It couldn't really make actual sense, only suicidefoodist sense, a cheap and pitiable counterfeit of sense.)

We've seen chesty animal waitresses before, naturally (such as this lovely sow). But this one displays, shall we say, "heightened" attributes. Indeed, her womanly bosoms are the very basis for this logo.

Of course, the captains of this barbecue team might be two fellows with the initial D. We expect hilarity no less trenchant from our barbecue team logosmanship.

The impression given, you will no doubt agree, is that insults to animalkind just don't cut it. Hence, the good old misogyny thrown into the mix. (Having been created by our favorite interviewee, this logo is guaranteed to contain nothing disrespectful toward animals. Or women?) Make no mistake, we are as confused as you. Was this waitress hired for her memory? Her upper body strength? The magic way she can talk customers into upsizing to the Heart Attack Platter? We doubt it. She adds eye candy to the artery candy on the official menu.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

For our first-ever interview, we made a real score: a leading light in the world of suicide food, a top-notch practitioner of the craft, someone you already know. Not by name probably, but by reputation. You've seen his work on this site. The cigar-smoking pig here, for instance, and this oft-mentioned specimen are two of his creations.

He was kind enough to answer our questions. We think you will find his answers enlightening and, in some cases, mighty puzzling.

(Citing the "extremists" who might visit us here, he preferred that we not use his full name or reveal his site's address. And so he will be referred to simply as Patrick.)

Suicide Food: How long have you been creating BBQ logos?

Patrick: About 4 years now.

Suicide Food: How many BBQ logos would you say you've created?

Patrick: I've probably created close to 1,000 logos.

Suicide Food: Why BBQ logos? What drove you to become the BBQ Logo King?

Patrick: I fell into the BBQ logos quite by accident. It began with one logo and that client posted it on a BBQ website and generated a lot of interest from other BBQ teams. Slowly, I began to get more requests for the logos until, now, it makes up about a third of my freelance cartooning career. I do more than just BBQ logos, however. Website mascots, children's books, and cartoon advertising are some other things that I do. BBQ logos just happen to be the most well-known part of my work.

Suicide Food: Have you ever been asked to draw something you felt was too extreme?

Patrick: I've never turned down a BBQ logo due to its content.

Suicide Food: What do you think would make one of these logos too extreme?

Patrick: All of the requests have been in good taste. Most of my clients don't take the logos too seriously and want something that's humorous and fun that they can make shirts and banners from for their particular group. I have had a couple of non-BBQ logos that I've turned down, however. Pornographic material and anything that's blatantly disrespectful to God would be things that I would decline. I was once asked to create a logo for a satanic website. I politely said, “No.”

Suicide Food: Don’t you think some of the logos that are disrespectful to animals could be seen as disrespectful to God’s creation?

Patrick: These logos have nothing to do with respect or lack of respect for animals. They're cartoons. Simple cartoons that are meant to be fun to look at and hopefully bring a smile to someone's face. It's no different from watching a Roadrunner cartoon.

Suicide Food: What do you think of suicidefood (the blog, that is)?

Patrick: My first impressions of the blog was a bit confused. I wasn't sure how to take it. I couldn't tell if it was a "militant vegetarian" site or something more humorous. The more I looked, I decided that it was done in fun. I was quite surprised when I found some of my logos on the site!

Suicide Food: What's your impression of vegans, in general? Do you understand how they might see your work?

Patrick: I, personally, am a meat-eater. Always have been, always will be. I can understand how someone would want to keep their diet pure of all the stuff they put into foods these days but I do think there is value in having meat in your diet. I think if you eat smart, don't overindulge all the time, and exercise, eating meat is perfectly fine and healthy for you.

Suicide Food: How do you feel about the other things that motivate many vegetarians and vegans? Like not wanting to harm or exploit animals?

Patrick: Do we fault a shark for eating a fish? Do we blame a tiger for attacking and killing a gazelle? No. They have to eat. So do humans. Animals are food, so we eat them.

[End of interview.]

We will ignore the fact that tigers don't actually attack and kill gazelles—hey, Patrick's an artist, not a zoologist—and instead look at some of the arguments. Carnivores eat other animals, and humans penning up livestock by the millions and subjecting them to agonizing lives, and slaughtering them by the billions is essentially the same thing. And, of course, animals really are only food. We've revealed this strain of thought present in the suicidefoodist movement many, many times.

We confess to a certain disappointment at discovering that this great agent of the Movement is just a man, prone to the same misapprehensions as most meat-eaters appear to be.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Hog and Fowl, together again, traveling the highways and byways of the Golden State.

Hog, self-satisfied, confident, debonair. (See the way he sticks his pinkies up while clutching his silverware? That's breeding is what it is.) Fowl, up for anything, a showboater, his fright-wig cockscomb askew. And, for some reason, those red wristbands—his wacky trademark.

They ply the state, from San Francisco to L.A., broadcasting their tasty dead animal message to everyone they pass. Why, they've even been known to show up at a free Gary "The Dream Weaver" Wright concert! Talk about range!

Proudly, they announce their intention to sell as many varieties of sausage as any Gary Wright concert-goer could want: bangers, kielbasa, hot links, anduie (sic!—surely they meant andouille?), even bratworst (sic, sic, deliciously sic!). Again, versatility is the watchword. This salesmanship is standard suicidefoodist procedure, of course. Our nation is choked with animals eager to announce their supposed deliciousness. Hog and Fowl are merely two among many, drops in the ocean.

And yet. There's something about the slogan on Hog's bibkin. Something about Hog's self-satisfaction. He dines on pork, knowing all the while that pig meat "rules." Slyly, he shares this knowledge with you. With all of us. Hog rules, too, and after he's dead he will rule all the more.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Does the absurdity of this mural tell us anything about our disturbed national zeitgeist?

In the shadow of our hallowed national temples, a collegiate chicken-jock—the mascot of the Cluck-U chain of fried chicken restaurants—dangles a chicken leg as an inducement to cross the finish line. (Cluck-U has dozens of outlets across the mid-Atlantic and, strangely, one in Lebanon. Yes, Lebanon. The country.)

The competitors—a wildly out-of-scale elephant and a donkey—are herbivores, yet they sprint like mad for the meat, kicking up political party-coded smoke as they go. True, the puffs of smoke are incorrectly colored. Blue for the G.O.P. and red for the Dems? This lapse is easily the least objectionable thing about the mural. (The most objectionable? You have to ask? Who put the chicken up to this? Does someone have dirt on him? Is this part of some insider politics, a little quid pro quo? Surely, the chicken didn't think of offering up a chicken leg to the winner.)

We are told by someone in a position to know that the mural was painted 1) on the side of a Cluck-U Chicken establishment and 2) with funds from the District of Columbia government. If true, this represents government waste—pork?—at its most inane.

We need to target funds where they can actually do some good. The Cluck-U chicken is too far gone, or too politically compromised, for government largess.

(Thanks to Dr. D.C. Vegan for the referral and photo.)

Addendum (5/17/10): Dr. Alan informs us that this mural was recently painted over. We don't know whether to mourn or celebrate. So we're opting for something in the middle: 30 quiet seconds of nonspecific thinking.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

In Westover, North Carolina, there is this chicken. She is unhappily married. Her life's horizons are close. She knows nothing except the four walls of her 800-square-foot manufactured home, the route to the market, and the giant pita she sleeps in.

She has little education and, frankly, little need for one. Her husband erased romance from his repertoire within a week of their hastily arranged wedding, and she has felt too unsure of her place—in her marriage, in her own life—to demand more. She is a fraying bundle of resentment and suppressed anger.

Every night for 11 years, she freshened her pita with a crisp lettuce leaf, and went to sleep, alone. Her husband would stumble home at one or two in the morning and pass out just inside the front door. Or he'd fall asleep watching the tube. Or maybe he wouldn't come home at all.

And then, one day, at the market, rifling her coupons to save a few pennies on lettuce, she's approached by a sweet-talking poultry farmer. "What's a spring chicken like you doing in the supermarket? You should be modeling somewhere!" He's so... charming. And good-looking, too, just like her husband used to be, before he sold his soul for a couple of six-packs a night.

Now do you understand the eyelashes, the leg dangling from the pita, the clumsy come-on? "I know you want me." Who is she talking to? Anyone willing to take a bite? Does she look at you and see her husband? Does she see anything anymore? She hardly recognizes herself. At first, she let herself be fooled that this was glamor, that this was living. Men wanted her. They paid for her. She believed—she wanted desperately to believe—that this was real, that she had finally discovered who she was.

She discovered, all right. She's property now. No longer does she watch the money change hands and feel precious or desired. No, she belongs to the man in the market, the man with the stains on his overalls. Those rosy stains that never quite come out. She is just another in his coop. Another money-maker. That legend says it all: "Try Our CHICKEN IN A PITA." Yes, "our" chicken.

Would you take advantage of a chicken this messed up? She doesn't need to be cooked and eaten. She needs help.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Sometimes, when a patient settles in for his first visit, the therapist thinks, "This one will take time. This one will take some digging." Reaching into the depths of an unfamiliar psyche can be arduous, tedious, frustrating.

And so, the search for clues begins immediately, automatically, the result of years of training and experience. Has the patient dressed down? Dressed up? Dressed to impress? Does she check her watch, her hair, her make-up? What can be read in the literature of his posture, his hands, the way his eyes follow you, or don't? Can her secrets be seen in a gaze that meets yours with confidence, or in one that flees from scrutiny?

Fortunately, some patients are simple. Such is the case with Havoc Pork, or for confidentiality's sake, H.P. For H.P.'s particular problems are brazenly superficial. Like florid tattoos, like neon, H.P.'s symptoms present themselves instantly to even the most unobservant observer.

Two contradictory propositions: havoc above, and happiness below. How can we account for this apparent impossibility, the coexistence of joy with devastation? What bridges the two and renders the impossible possible?

You don't need a clinician's eye to see it.

The solution, the answer to H.P.'s paradox, is a crushing and willful ignorance. He has resolved to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. Only by deliberately ignoring his situation—and by refusing to speak out against it—can he maintain the oblivion upon which his version of happiness is based. This is a delusion paid for dearly, for the price is his mental integrity. Indeed, his very life is bargained away.

Monday, August 20, 2007

This goat sees himself as a cross between Superman (that red and yellow pentagonal figure behind him) and Atlas, bearer of the world. The latter characterization is closer to the truth. For while the goat has no super-powers, he does bear a terrible burden. His impressive abdominals cannot change the fact that Goat World—his world—thinks of him merely as product to be moved.

Says the Goat World website:

"Our goal is to produce superior quality breeding, show and commercial grade stock to serve the needs of the Full blood and commercial meat goat producers in New Jersey and the entire Northeast."

So much rests on the goat's narrow shoulders! And for his sacrifice, his selflessness, his service, surely the people of Goat World treat him with the utmost respect? (Are you new to this? Of course they don't!)

Our goat here is a boer goat. This is what Goat World has to say about another breed, the savanna:

"We believe the Savanna breed will help us meet our goals as commercial meat goat producers. Savanna goats are functionally efficient, meat-producing goat that exhibits excellent growth rates, muscling and carcass traits. This breed make a great pairing with our herd of Boer goats."

Excellent carcass traits. Do you even want to know what that means? We do not. But we know enough to understand that it isn't livestock industry-speak for "Goats are God's creatures." And what of "meat-producing"? Does that not call to mind industrious goats laboring to produce a commodity from the sweat of their brow? But, no, the goats are the commodity. All they have are their bodies, and even those do not belong to them.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

An entirely new category of suicidefood. We are horrified, frightened, and impressed, all at once. For here we see an actual animal sharing his drive to be killed and eaten, to participate in every part of the gruesome procedure.

The revolutionary crab knife—so simple even a dead crab can use it!—is shown being manipulated not by a human diner, but by the crab itself. The main dish is understandably eager to show off the knife's innovative design, featuring a point that is "rounded enough to get into all areas of the crab's body and claws, yet you can go right to your mouth with the crab meat without cutting or sticking yourself." (Say what you like, that crab can sell.)

The purveyors of the nightmare imagery we regularly explore here have previously confined themselves to depictions of animals, but not the whiz kids of Casson's. It's as though they keyed into a jaded public's boredom. Cartoon animals and line art are so 2006. Like the pornography addict who requires ever more extreme thrills, perhaps the consumer of meat requires ever more "edginess" in his advertisements and corporate identity.

(Thanks to Dr. Robert and/or Dr. Angela (?) for the referral.)

Addendum (11/06/2007): Another example of a dead crab holding the implements intended for its dismemberment and consumption (this one from Lestardo's in Delaware)!

Addendum 2 (3/21/10): We never dreamed it would take more than two years for another example of a knife-wielding crab to surface! This mascot of the Sligo (North West Ireland) Food and Culture Festival has gone so far as to have two limbs replaced with the implements of his self-destruction!

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Is it just that hunting is beyond us, that we find its culture and conventions perplexing? Does the image to the right resonate with anyone? Who is this turkey supposed to be?

What it looks like to the hunting-averse:

Some turkey with a comb-over trying to recapture his misspent youth hits the trail with his sunglasses—the "cool" kind with the cord in back, to keep the things on your head—and his black tee. He'll take whatever scraps the gang deigns to part with, so long as he can be one of the guys, if only for a few, fleeting hours. And—this part is crucial—even if his participation takes the form of target.

Maybe it's a mid-life crisis. Maybe it's some nagging identity issues. Maybe his wife has left him. Who knows what drives a turkey to such lengths?

Whatever's behind it, he set the alarm for 5:30, packed up the truck, and got ready to dodge bullets until around noon. Of course, there was always Plan B: get pumped full of birdshot, plucked, roasted, eaten, and excreted. Hey, all for one and one for all, right?

Of course, this only renders the whole affair more pathetic than it would otherwise be. Start with a slow, flightless bird. Throw in the bird's desperate desire to pal around with you, and you're left with a sad charade that merely underscores the bankruptcy of the hunt.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Rasta Joe couldn't remain at the top of the disgustatory heap for even four weeks! Smoky Jon, you are the current champion in the Ugly Appetite-Killer division. Jon achieved this dubious honor through a combination of slovenliness and world-darkening girth.

Behold the porcine colossus! He gorges himself on a mammoth slab of steaming, dripping pig ribs while his anus curses the entire Arctic region.

This suggests nothing so much as a world overrun, an Empire of Meat. The ruling party's fleshy flag: a greedy, sloppy pig that signals their ownership of the globe.

Strange that, for an enterprise laying claim to the whole of creation—"Best ribs in the universe!!" and "outta this world!"—they seem tied closely to Earth only. Indeed, the planet is the pig's beanbag chair (if not his toilet).

Another unappealing thing about Smoky Jon atop a condemned planet: it's reminiscent of this, the Sherwin Williams paint logo. Which calls to mind great waves of sticky excreta issuing from The Pig and, well, "covering the Earth" in glop. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more unpleasant.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Make no mistake: the man's joy is their joy, their fondest wish to follow their master even to the bitterest end. What you are seeing is pride—those snouts up in the air! Pride at being the viande de 1er choix (the "first choice meat").

Note also that the master they follow is not a farmer. That could almost make sense. We can easily imagine at least the bond that might have formed between the animals and their longtime tender. (The following-to-the-death part would still be too much to swallow, however.) But they do not traipse along behind the farmer—it is the butcher whose presence they find intoxicating! (Yes, the butcher: See his apron? See the knife slung below his belt?) The butcher, the very man who will soon kill them! That is the man they are in thrall to!

How they spring! How they trot! How the cow's bell rings out the happy news: Today we are to be butchered! Such a pure distillation this is of suicidefoodism's grotesque ethic! The animals do not live in dumb incomprehension. They do not graciously submit to a fate meted out by their human overlords. These more plausible depictions run counter to the sickness at the heart of suicidefoodism. The animals must caper to their death, ecstatic—proud—for the chance to sacrifice themselves. This is not merely their lot. It is their joy.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

This tough-talking, crowd-pleasing, animal-stabbing-to-death bullfighter from Portugal shows us how far the suicidefoodist worldview has spread. How like toxic smoke it is, insinuating itself into cultures and pastimes around the globe.

In Portugal, where bullfighting is merely cruel and not necessarily deadly, the matador Pedrito de Portugal (or, in English, Petey Portugal) was fined €100,000 for enthusiastically giving in to the wishes of a frenzied mob audience and killing his bull-opponent. (Tauricide has been outlawed there since 1928, even though bullfighting remains legal. Petey Portugal recently struck out in court, and, presumably, will now cough up the cash.)

In a New York Times article, Petey reveals that he is more than just another vicious idiot. He's also the vanguard of a new form of suicidefoodism, one that we may call suicidesportism. Here are Petey's words:

"Bullfighting in Portugal is like a play with the ending missing. Killing the bull is an art, and the way we do it in Portugal deprives the bull of his dignity." (Emphasis added, to drive home the point that this guy is a special sort of madman.)

To clarify: Portugal (the country) allows bullfighting, just not to the death. Petey, spokesman for an obsolete ideology, pooh-poohs such (moderate) decency, claiming that sparing a bull's life injures its honor.

Do you see? Just as pigs, cows, chicken, deer, lambs, lobsters, fish, and crabs want nothing more than to die at our hands so that they might be fried, roasted, or boiled, Portuguese bulls want to be killed in the name of bloody spectacle.

So for The Wild Bunch to elect to go with a snake... Well, wild is right! It's just the kind of off-the-beaten-trail nuttiness that will put the Wild Bunch on the map! Rest assured: it's not all for show. They do serve rattlesnake, wrapped in bacon, no less.

Again, what a disjunctive state of affairs! These pals, these partners—how robust and friendly they are. How like the cartoonified animals we all grew up with, they who served as imaginary friends, boon companions, and windows into the world of human interaction. They would be at home raising hijinks in a tony department store, say, or running riot at the opera.

But all of them—even the lowly snake—are reduced to Orwellian spokesanimals. It is as though our shared cultural inheritance were squandered, traded away in the service of filthy lucre.

This bunch might not have escaped unscathed from their treachery: They might well be greeting us not from the chuck wagon, under a blanket of stars, but instead from the afterlife. That ember-red circle—is it the portal to Hell?

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Right there on the plastic bucket, a cheerful pig done up in the national costume of his killers.

And, truly, what quarrel could he have with them? After all, they merely butchered him and his family, and recovered their fat from the lifeless bodies and melted it, rendering their essence into a consumer product hardly noted for its rarity. (The Spanish phrase manteca de cerdo translates literally to the comparatively sanitized "pig butter.")

Porci-Mex is too magnanimous to let a little something like the rape of pigdom sour him on humanity. His generous spirit should serve as inspiration to all "food" animals awaiting their final disposition.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Over the months, we have discovered something curious: copycat pig-related logos. We acknowledge that our time on the front lines may have clouded our judgment. And yet.

We believe we have uncovered evidence for what could be the biggest scandal to hit the suicide food logo industry in a decade. We are prepared to lay out our findings with dispassion. And so, exhibits A–F:

Remarkably, the orthography shows more variety than the pig images. You've got your BBQ, your B.B.Q., your B-B-Q, and so on. Apparently, these joints' drive to set themselves apart only reached partway up their signs. At least Smokehouse Bar-B-Que went to the trouble of inserting a rack of "mouth-watering" ribs and a barebecue implement into the image. Way to innovate, Smokehouse Bar-B-Que.

Lacking the investigative skills to dig deeper, we cannot, unfortunately, state with any certainty which of these logos can claim precedence. We can, however, state that this logo should never have been appropriated by anyone. Just look at it!

(Thanks to Dr. Courtney for the Pittman's B-B-Q referral.)

Addendum (8/21/07): A report from Dr. Amy of Portland, Oregon, informs us of yet another puzzling instance of this disagreeable logo. That makes seven.

Addendum 2 (8/25/07): And then there were eight. (Photo from fiery-foods.com.)

Addendum 3 (9/12/07): Nine!

Addendum 4 (10/15/07): Ten! At least Helen's Sausage House of Smyrna, Delaware, has taken a stab at originality with their cartoonified version of our ubiquitous logo.

Addendum 9 (12/22/08): Do you see? No, this isn't another example of Crotchy, as we call the pig in question. But don't you see? It's the same catfish we've seen associating with Crotchy twice before! We, um… We thought you'd like to know.

Addendum 10 (1/12/09): Fifteen. Thanks again, Dr. Milaka!

Addendum 11 (3/13/09): Sixteen.

Addendum 12 (7/06/09): And here's Crotchy during his stint at Pittsburgh's Mr. Ribbs. (Number 17.) Thank you for the photo, Dr. William.

Pages

NOTE

All images are trademarks and/or copyrights of their respective owners.

Diagnosis

What is Suicide Food? Suicide Food is any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed. Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise. Suicide Food identifies with the oppressor. Suicide Food is a bellwether of our decadent society. Suicide Food says, “Hey! Come on! Eating meat is without any ethical ramifications! See, Mr. Greenjeans? The animals aren’t complaining! So what's your problem?” Suicide Food is not funny.